HR Giger: Bathroom traumas and Ernst Fuch's demons

a) In
Giger's Necronomicon, Giger has talked about a dream that he had about a
bath, and there was a little boy about five years old who was
completely violet blue with little horns.

b) He acknowledge that the demons
from his dreams are more related to the bible and they look a little
bit like like the demons that Ernst Fuchs claims that he can see rather than anything typical of his own paintings. And
Giger's view about how this was so, is because they must share, as
Gustave Jung theorised, a common archetype

Ernst Fuchs

HR Giger: I was lying on my bed watching Li dancing in a yellow dress, which sprayed
sparks of yellow light across the room. The space was interwoven with red
geometric shapes and the pictures on the wall were coming away in layers. The
walls pulsated in step with my heartbeat. The first sign of anxiety came when I
suddenly had to piss and went to the lavatory. The edge of the bowl grew slowly
toward my penis like a wide-open vagina as if to castrate me. At first, the idea
amused me. But suddenly the whole room began to grow narrower and narrower,
the walls and pipes took on the aspect of loose skin with festering wounds, and
small, repellent creatures glared out at me from the dark corners and cracks.

I turned and hurried toward the exit, but the door was infinitely far away and very
narrow and tall. The walls hemmed me like two paunchy lumps of flesh. I leapt
or the door, drew the bolt, and rushed into the corridor, gasping for breath. Rid of
the specter, I went to Li’s room and lay down. Little Boris (son of Li’s friend
Evelyn) was also in the room and wanted to play with me. He began to trample on
the bed beside me, kicking me. I was as helpless as a small child and could not
defend myself. Li finally rescued me from my diminutive tormentor, who had by
now turned into a little violet-green devil with an offensively mean and aggressive
expression. Li took Boris to his mother, who was hanging around in the kitchen.

But the couple of kicks in the stomach had been enough. I felt sick. The air in the
room was stifling. My only thought was to throw open the window and escape to
the garden, for the room was at ground level. But at the last minute, I noticed a
woman looking at me strangely. The vomit already in my mouth, I turned round,
rushed into the corridor and suddenly stopped dead – I was afraid to go into the
narrow lavatory again. In the kitchen, I noticed Evelyn with her son, both staring
at me. The only sanctuary was the small bathroom and the rusty blue bathtub with
its flaking enamel. So I grabbed Li by the hand and dragged her into the
bathroom, where I vomited into the bathtub. The vomit spewed endlessly from my
mouth in the form of a thick, gray, leathery worm turning into a kind of primeval
slime, and once into the living intestines of a slaughtered pig.

During
this whole performance, I had held Li firmly by the left wrist. She had
been struggling to free the clogged waste pipe by poking at it with a
ballpoint pen.
Finally, she could no longer stand the repulsive garlic-impregnated
smell, and we
both vomited together into the bathtub, hand in hand, while the gas
water heater
glared at us malevolently, Now I was afraid of being aloen, and Li had
to keep holding me by the hand, like a small child, I wanted to leave
the house and get out into the fresh air. She put on my coat and shoes
and we went into the street, but I was overcome with panic again. We had
to make wide detours round harmless passers-by whom my brain had turned
into crazed murderers. Everything seemed hostile towards me - houses,
trees, cars - only water could calm me down. A trench by the roadside
threatened to swallow me up. Despite Li's assurances that it was not so,
the pavement seemed to slant violently, so that I kept sliding sideways
into the trench. I clung to Li with tear filled eyes, for I seemed to
be lost without her. Li had to suddenly get some chewing gum, to get rid
of the sour taste in her mouth. She went to the kiosk, and I had to
stand alone and helpless a couple of minutes on the corner. When she
finally came back I was frozen and shivering, and wanted to return to my
little room in Feldeggstrasse. This was a mistake, however, for hardly
had we entered the room when the warmth and confined space brought back
my nausea. I vomit into a basin and ordered Li to turn all the pictures
face to the wall. All of them frightened me and I grew more and more
panic stricken. Li had to carry out my orders with lightning succession. The fear of losing control of my senses made
me more and more confused in my actions. Suddenly I felt I could not stand the
torment any more! I had to kill myself. Now the loaded revolver became highly
dangerous. I asked Li to empty it and throw the ammunition away. But as she did
not know how, I had to take hold of the revolver to do it myself and, in doing so,
suddenly became aware of the ridiculousness of my fear. My horror vanished and
– thanks God – I awoke. (Giger's Necronomicon, p14)

Fear: Have you ever met a demon in your dreams? Giger:Hmm.
In Necronomicon, I had this dream about the bath. A little boy about
five years old was completely blue-violet and he had little horns. Your
demons are not "Gigeresque" then?Fear:Are they more biblical? Giger:In the way they look?FearYes.Giger:That's strange. They look a little bit like Ernst Fuch's demons. He told me he can see demons like that. [Pause] I think there are people, as Gustave Jung theorised, who share a common archetype(Fear magazine, December 1990, p22)